Student Videos Promote Campus Recycling

Students of the Single Camera Video Production course at SUNY Cobleskill honed their skills while promoting campus recycling this spring with support from a College Council Grant from the New York State Association for Reduction, Reuse and Recycling.

The competitive NYSAR grant funds programs that take a creative and innovative approach to initiating, improving, or expanding efforts to promote reduction, reuse, or recycling on college campuses.

“It is imperative that the campus community improve upon current recycling efforts,” said Adam Wild, the grant author and a Visiting Professor of Plant and Animal Science. “It is important to work together as a community to solve campus issues. Empowering students to encourage their peers to recycle is a great way to work together and solve this campus issue.”

The videos were judged by a panel and the winners (below) will be shown to incoming freshmen at the 2017 Orientation and displayed on digital message boards across campus. The winning filmmakers also receive a prize from the grant funding. This is the third year that the Single Camera Video Production class has collaborated to create videos that promote sustainability on campus.

“While I like to think the students enjoy making videos in general, the possibility of receiving an award pushes students to stretch their creativity and filmmaking skills,” said Assistant Professor of Communication Julie Casper Roth.

The work was based on a recent campus waste audit that found that only 10 percent of recyclable items actually made it into single-stream recycling bins. It also built on work by the campus Plant and Sustainability Club, which found that 50 percent of the garbage from campus residence halls could have been recycled.

To try to improve those numbers, the video and awareness campaign will include a healthy competition between campus buildings to see who can recycle the most. A follow-up waste audit will be conducted in December 2017.